Scientist stores data in animal for the first time
Benn Jordan, a musician and acoustic scientist, was able to 'write' the picture – a drawing of a bird – to a European starling by converting it to an audio file and playing it to the songbird.
The bird was able to repeat the sound with remarkable accuracy, allowing the image to be recreated when put through computer software.
'To my knowledge, this may technically be the first time anyone has ever stored data in an animal,' Mr Jordan said.
Images, as well as potentially other types of information, can be converted into sounds using a spectral synthesiser, which represents sound waves in a visual format known as a spectrogram.
Mr Jordan drew a simple picture of a bird and converted it into a sound: a split-second electronic sweep that would be meaningless to the human ear.
He played it to the starling, a rescue bird called 'The Mouth', which was later able to repeat back the sound faithfully.
When converted back into a spectrogram, the recording of the starling's song looked remarkably similar to Mr Jordan's drawing.
The bird had effectively saved the picture as an audio signature, in the same way that it might be stored on a hard disk as ones and zeroes.
European starlings are known to have extraordinary mimicry abilities and can produce complex acoustic structures, making them uniquely capable of repeating the unconventional sound produced by converting a picture into a spectrogram.
Mr Jordan said the starling had effectively saved 176 kilobytes of data. In theory, other types of data such as text could be converted and 'stored' within birds.
'The fact that you could set up a speaker in your yard and conceivably store any amount of data in songbirds is crazy,' he said.
Starlings often store a large repertoire of songs to impress potential mates, with adult starlings having up to 67, according to one study.
Researchers have been looking for alternative ways of storing data amid an explosion in the amount of information being created.
Microsoft has experimented with storing data in DNA and in etched glass.
Audio signals have previously been used to transmit data. Advertising companies have in the past experimented with ultrasonic beacons that could be detected by smartphone apps to detect if a person was watching an advert.
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